Small Law Firms

Networking 101: Don't Tell Me What You Do, But For Whom You Do It

The most important thing to bring to your networking.

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For all of the sex appeal of social media and the seeming ease of search engine optimization to market a solo or small firm practice, nothing beats the power and affordability of good old-fashioned, face-to-face networking. Yet as valuable a marketing tool as personal networking is, it often doesn’t produce optimal results because lawyers consistently fail to communicate key pieces of information that would lead to potential referrals: a description of their ideal client. Here’s why it matters.

Many lawyers forget that when they attend a networking event, the goal isn’t merely to meet people who may become your clients, but also to meet people who may know people who can become your clients. Yet many of the people you meet may be reluctant to refer cases because even if they understand what kind of practice you have — family law, estate planning, bankruptcy, etc. — they may not know what kinds of clients you serve. For example, consider a new contact you met at a bar association event whose administrative assistant going through a separation. Even though the contact realizes from your conversation and business card that you handle family law cases, the contact may assume that your rates would be too expensive for his assistant to afford. The outcome would be different, however, if you’d told the contact that your firm is focused on representing clients of modest means.

Conversely, failing to describe your ideal client can also result in “false positives” — leads that may have seemed appropriate on the surface to your networking colleague but that aren’t a fit for your firm. Returning to the last example, let’s say that you’re a family law attorney but that your preferred cases involve complex, disputed matters for professionals and business owners. If your networking contact were to pass on your name to his assistant, you or your staff would probably spend time discussing her situation only to recognize that she’s not a match for your business.

Identifying an ideal client serves another purpose: it can help those who meet you distinguish you from other lawyers so you’ll be at the top of your colleagues’ list for referrals. Thus, even though that immigration lawyer you met last week has a wallet jam-packed with business cards from estate planning lawyers, she made two estate planning referrals to you because you’d shared that your ideal client is one who owns property outside the country.

Some lawyers are concerned that identifying an ideal client may deter more general referrals. But that’s not necessarily the case since you would also be competing with more lawyers for those general referrals. And there’s also a cost to more but less targeted referrals in that you spend more time vetting the potential clients only to determine that they’re not a fit. In short, it’s far better to receive two ideal clients who are right for your firm than to attract ten random clients who have to be winnowed down.

So if you’re planning on attending any networking events soon, come prepared with business cards, an elevator speech and one indispensable tool — a description of your ideal client.

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Carolyn ElefantCarolyn Elefant has been blogging about solo and small firm practice at MyShingle.comsince 2002 and operated her firm, the Law Offices of Carolyn Elefant PLLC, even longer than that. She’s also authored a bunch of books on topics like starting a law practice, social media, and 21st century lawyer representation agreements (affiliate links). If you’re really that interested in learning more about Carolyn, just Google her. The Internet never lies, right? You can contact Carolyn by email at elefant@myshingle.comor follow her on Twitter at @carolynelefant.

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